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02. Crab Claw Cove cont.
With the goblins having piled down into the bowels of their massive junker, the party decided to leave them to their retreat. The metal ship slowly started ambling away from Crab Claw's shores. * With evening drawing in, the group decided to spend the night at the Bone Site and return to Driscoll in the morning. ** They found out that they'd killed the cat Pyt had borrowed from Woden. With the cat hidden in the box-form of Quinn's folding boat, Wilfred had used a cantrip to place the whole thing into a small extra-dimensional space for safekeeping. Unfortunately, the space didn't have air in it, and the cat had suffocated. The inside of the box was now marked with its final, futile scratches. ** During the night, Clark, Malak, and Vic were led away from camp by a will-o'-the-wisp. Flashing its alluring light, the spirit led the trio to some pools containing scattered gold and treasure, but it had turned out to be a trap, for the area was also the nest of giant constrictor snakes! Without the aid of the rest of their party, Malak and Vic very nearly died, only surviving in the end due to some excellent stabbing from the young pirate with her magic dagger. * The next morning, the group sailed back to the cove of Crab Claw. ** They met with Laylin, Driscoll's first mate. She invited them to attend a meeting of the captains that was to take place that evening. ** Clark was chosen by the party to be their representative speaker, though the rest were permitted to be present in the room. ** The meeting was a tense affair. Driscoll asserted his authority; explained that everyone under his flag was there by choice, not coercion; and curtly dismissed the idea mentioned by some that there was a traitor among his forces - the disaster the month before, when the Cockatrice was destroyed and the Fortunate Fool's crew were decimated, reeked of someone having sold them out. ** Clark negotiated for the return of a sacred artefact from Starth's monastery, which Badger, the captain of the Hogshead, had taken to wearing as a necklace. Driscoll gave Badger 600 gold pieces to part with the ugly thing. ** Driscoll also explained that he had a plan to resume his fight against Pirate Lord Shandy. He would sail to one of her island hatcheries that he'd learned the location of through the recent skirmish with Rumidian forces, kill what magical beasts she was raising there, and then set about creating magical items from their corpses. The grand prize were apparently baby dragons she was raising on the island. When Driscoll asked the group if they'd come with and kill some of the legendary beasts with him, they unanimously agreed. * Driscoll had already sent most of his own crew out to the island as a scouting party. There were still at least a couple weeks until they'd return. In the meantime, the party decided to explore the forests of Crab Claw Cove, which had been left largely unexplored by the Eight-Finger Pirates. ** Wilfred and Malak were hoping to find useful wild herbs in the forests. ** During their excursion, the group came across a strange area of trees that appeared to have been afflicted with a blight of some sort. In a small tomb formed of tree roots, Wilfred found a magical staff in the hand of an embalmed humanoid corpse, now only bones. Suddenly, the party were set upon by a horde of finger-sized, flesh-eating grubs that crawled out of the root network all around them. ** Starth almost died when a grub buried deep into his leg - Vic stabbed the thing even as it was boring its way up the flesh of the gnome's thigh. Ultimately though, with fire and steel and a swift retreat, the group were able to make it through the ordeal. ** On their way back to the shore-side settlement, the group encountered a wood woad in the forest. It wanted them to return the staff they'd taken back to the tomb. After a brief, fruitless conversation between it and Wilfred in Sylvan -- the creature didn't appear to be keen for compromise -- a fight ensued and the woad was quickly slain, but not before briefly knocking Wilfred unconscious. Category:Part One